Hello again, dear readers. I just got in from my morning walk around the block. I noticed one of my neighbors, “Mrs. D.”, taking her groceries out of her trunk after returning from the store. I saw she had two bottles of soda in her bag. That woman drinks too much soda. I just saw her buy some last week, and she lives by herself, so it’s not as if she’s sharing it with anyone. You can’t drink too much soda or you’ll get the tooth rot and the diabetes. The next time I see her son visiting, I’m going to pull him aside and tell him to talk to her about it. It’s a sacrifice on my part, but I’ll do it because it’s the neighborly thing to do.

I put up the Christmas lights over the weekend. They’re the new kind on nets. They call them light nets. All you’ve got to do is plug them in and throw them over the bush you want to put lights on. I even put some on my mailbox bee colony.

The other thing I did was to put up the Christmas tannenbaum. Derek did a fine job guarding the property while the door was open (so we could bring the tannenbaum inside), and Tricia was equally magnificent setting the tree in the stand and making sure it was standing straight and tall. Finally, Jessica hoisted baby Nevaeh up to light the star on the top branch. She was too young to be able to do anything, but I flipped the switch when she touched the star. That’s how you make Christmas fun for the younger generation. And we decorated it with real candles, just like they did when they first came out with tannenbaums back in the 1940s.

Hello there, Internet readers. Yesterday I was toiling away doing some Internet research when I learned about an important new trend in the online world: Microblogging. According to this Blog, microblogs are like regular blogs, but with everything smaller: The pictures, the data, the words…even the E-mail. And the young people love ’em. That is why I am going to try my hand at microblogging today. That should get some more young people reading. Presenting the From the Desk of The Codger Microblog:

A good day to you, my loyal subjects. It’s hard to believe, but today I am celebrating the 100th anniversary of my “lifestyle column”. Yes, that’s right: I, along with a little help from my grandson Max and my grandniece Tricia, have brought you 100 articles telling you how to live your life the right way (The Codger way). During that time, our little round table discussion group has grown together, and I became the Commander in Chief I always have been. We’ve honed our computer skills, we’ve found new role models, we’ve proven the hippies wrong. As we celebrate this momentous occasion, let us take a walk down memory lane, remembering the articles that changed your life…

What are your favorite Codger moments to-date? What would you like to see The Codger write more about in this “lifestyle column”? How would I go about eliminating the competition? Share your thoughts in the comments box.

Yoooo, M-Fixie back in da house. Ain’t gonna fake it. My grandpa’s at the casino again so I’m taking over for today. You know da drill. I’m thinking of taking a road trip to Cali. Mendocino County’s where its at. I shouldn’t have ANY probs selling some of my hand-blown glassware up there which would pay for the trip. My boy Luke moved out there and he says it’s amazing, and I could crash on his couch. He said he knows people that have greenhouses out in the open and the cops don’t even care b/c everyone has one. They have to let you go because the economy up there sucks otherwise, and everyone would be out of work.

It’s close to San Fran too, so I’m def gonna check it out down there. A dude I went to school with lives there and he said he knows a lot of girls there. I said he has to help me get some CALIFORNIA LOVE, but no fatties and no uggos. 8===D (.)(.) He also said that fixie culture is ginormous out there. So so awesome!

Cali’s gonna be mad chill. I just wanna sit on the beach at night and get soooo mellow. IDK when I’m gonna leave, but first I gotta see if I can borrow someone’s car or if there’s someone that I can ride with. I think that dude CJ that went camping with us might be down, so I might ask him.
Peace out.
XX m-fixie XX

It’s grand to see you again, dear readers. As entertaining as it was for me to be reporting live from the campground this past weekend, it’s nice to be back home again…can’t say that I ever feel entirely comfortable leaving the missus in charge.

During my vacation, several important news stories took place, and I intend to get us all up-to-date. Did you know that a new red panda was born in the Washington, DC zoo? Now that’s not the same as a regular giant panda that’s red. No, it’s a separate animal entirely that looks like a raccoon. Which is good because we get to keep red pandas. China owns all the regular giant panda cubs that are born here because we’re only allowed to rent giant pandas from them. They call it the buzzword “panda diplomacy”, but they’re charging us a million dollars per year per panda just to rent them. That doesn’t even include the cost of bamboo for them to eat, and they eat a lot of it. And when I say we can only rent giant pandas, I don’t mean rent-to-own, though those places are the biggest rip-off next to renting pandas. You end up paying four or five times what you would’ve paid for a sofa or a refrigerator had you just bought it outright. But at least you’ll get to keep it if you make your payments. Those pandas are all going to get repossessed by China eventually. That’s why I’m glad it was a red panda being born. He gets to be an American, and he’ll never get repossessed.

A good day to you all. Today, I would like to update you on my mailbox bee colony. Unfortunately, when I inquired with the fellow at the Radio Shack, he told me that they don’t make a “Web Cam” specifically designed for outdoor bee monitoring. I’m not going to waste my hard-earned money on some Web Cam and have it fail just because it wasn’t made specifically for bees. That’s how the manufacturers get you: They make you think that electronics are good for everything, but then when you try to use them for the one thing you want to use them for, they don’t work and the manufacturer’s warranty is voided.

Yesterday, I went out to check on the bees and see if they’ve made any honey yet. Now as I mentioned to you last time, I’d been thinking that they might “bee” mason bees or carpenter bees, but I’m still not convinced. Something about them makes me think that they want to produce honey, but they’re not sure how. Perhaps their queen died and they’re looking for a new role model. As their human steward, it is my duty to step in and fulfill the void.

That’s when I got the idea to show them some honey and beeswax to give them the idea what to do. So I poured some honey on top of and inside the mailbox, and I inserted a wax candle as well—the honey acted as nature’s adhesive, sealing it safely to the mailbox’s interior. If my bee students are as smart as I think they are, they’ll be churning out honey any day now. Remind me to tell you about my new compost heap I started up. You can never have too many projects, that’s what I always say.

Hello again, loyal readers. As I have often written about here, I am growing a victory garden in my back yard, and yesterday, like all days, I went out to tend it. While I was busy trying to prop up the rebar trellis I made by pouring cement mix into the foundation – a process we have all recently learned is called a “top kill”—I noticed that my brand new pop up trailer was popped up into the “up” position, which is certainly not how I left it when I parked it there. I went over to investigate, and I heard music playing inside. Well, if the trailer is rocking, The Codger is knocking.

It turns out that there are three young people, two boys and a girl, living inside my camper, and that my grandniece Tricia had invited them to live there. She was inside the trailer too, but she lives in my house and was just visiting the trailer. She explained that they didn’t have anywhere else to go because they didn’t have supportive parental figures (such as myself). Two of them are a nice teenage couple: The girl is expecting a baby, and the poor guy said he just got kicked out of the Army because it downsized. D@mn economy! And then the oldest one is an artist of some sort, and you know artists don’t make much money. Certainly not enough to pay rent on a house. What kind of adult would I be if I did not support such a nice young couple and the arts by giving them all a place to stay for now?

Now that all that was settled, and I gave them all my blessing, the oldest one (the artist) handed me a Smirnoff Ice and told me that I’d been “iced” and had to drink it. Of course I knew that he was talking about the popular new game called Bros Icing Bros, because I just read all about it on a blog. It’s so popular that it even has its own blog (in addition to all the other blogs that people write about it). It seems most popular amongst college kids, but nowhere does it say there’s an age limit on who can play. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good, clean fun for all ages. I’m thinking of “icing” him back by disguising a bottle of Smirnoff Ice inside a fruit basket.